The necessity of an efficacious vaccine against the Malaria causing agent Plasmodium falciparum is apparent from the 800 000 deaths and over 250 million clinical cases recorded each year (WHO 2009). To reduce the disease burden and achieve complete malaria eradication in endemic countries an effective vaccine is necessary. Currently the most promising vaccine candidate, a P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein (CSP) based malaria vaccine termed RTS, S/AS01B/AS02A, showed promising but mixed results in clinical and field trials (1-5, 7-9). The immune correlates associated with RTS, S induced protection show a strong association between vaccine efficacy and the magnitude of the humoral and cellular responses (14).
Alternatively, Human Adenovirus (HAdV) vector expressing a circumsporozoite (CS) protein in the development of a Malaria vaccine induced high cellular responses but lower antibody responses against the CS protein (10, 11, 13). The combination of priming with HAdV35.CS and boosting with RTS,S/AS01B significantly improved immunogenicity to P. falciparum CS compared to either vaccine alone (15). This significant improvement of immunogenicity demonstrates the benefit of combining the HAdV vector with a strong B-cell inducer component. Hence there is a need for recombinant adenoviral vectors that induce both a strong cellular response and a strong humoral response.